Desire Lines by Christina Baker Kline Read Free Book Online Page A

“Too bad. I always liked Paul. But I suppose what I liked about him was probably what made him a bad husband.”
“Oh, really?” Kathryn moves behind her wheelchair. “Want to go out on the porch?”
“In, out, whatever.” She folds her hands in her lap and Kathryn wheels her outside. “He was quite a flirt, wasn’t he?”
“Did he flirt with you, Grandma?”
She cranes her neck to look up at Kathryn, and grins. “Outrageously.” Kathryn wheels her over to a spot in the shade near several old women sitting in wicker chairs, fanning themselves.
One of them nods. “Hello, Alice.”
“Hello, Mary, Joan,” she says. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“A little hot for my taste,” Joan says, making a face.
“Is this your granddaughter here?” Mary asks.
“Yes, it is. Say hello, Kathryn.”
This is an old joke between them. “Hello, Kathryn,” Kathryn says.
Grandma Alice looks up and smiles, and then pinches her arm, hard, on the inside. “We just came over to say hello. We’re going over here.” She points to an empty corner of the porch.
When they’re safely out of earshot, Kathryn says, “I can’t believe you pinched me, Grandma.”
“Did I ask to be set over there? Gawd. Those two will talk your ear off.”
Kathryn sits down in a white chair opposite her. “So, do you have any friends here, or are you rude to everyone?”
She narrows her eyes. “I’m not rude. It’s just my personality.” Sitting up straight, she primly smooths her blouse. “And yes, I do have friends. Selectively.”
“So you’re not lonely, then.”
“Of course I’m lonely sometimes,” she says. “Everyone who’s alone gets lonely—it’s inevitable. But I’d rather be lonely than have to chitchat with frivolous old ladies.” She gives Kathryn a shrewd look. “Of course, it’s much harder when you’re accustomed to companionship. You’re pretty lonely these days, I’d wager.”
“I don’t know,” Kathryn says. “I don’t know what I’m feeling. I’m just kind of numb.”
“Well, that’s all right.”
“No it isn’t.” She leans back and closes her eyes, the heels of her hands against her temples. “It’s humiliating. Paul has a life.”
“And so do you.”
“No I don’t. I’m alive. I’m breathing. That’s the most you can say for me.”
“Here we go, Kathryn feeling sorry for herself….”
“Grandma, I’m just facing reality. I came home because I didn’t know what else to do.”
“And what’s wrong with that? You’ve been through a mess. You need some time to relax.”
“I don’t want to relax. I want to get on with my life.”
“For God’s sake, girl, take the pressure off,” she says crisply. “Life is long. There’s nothing you have to get done in such a hurry.”
“I feel as if I’m drifting.”
“So drift.” She lifts her thin, knobby hands from her lap and waves them back and forth in the air. “You’ve been moving in one direction, and now you need to go in another. You’ve got to take some time to figure out which way to go.”
“Oh, Grandma,” Kathryn says.
“Besides, I need you around for a while. Put some distance between me and your mother.”
Kathryn reaches over and squeezes her hand. “She tries.”
“She tries, I know. She tries. All that trying makes me tired. Promise me one thing: Promise me that when it gets to the point where you have to try so hard, you’ll just leave me alone. Okay?”
She starts to protest. “But she means—”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” Kathryn says.
After leaving her grandmother with her crossword puzzle, Kathryn sits in the car in the parking lot, twisting the ring on her finger. There’s nothing you have to get done in such a hurry. She imagines Paul tonight, playing bass guitar with his band at a small club in Charlottesville as he does most Saturdays, a little cluster of groupies swaying together up front. Her life with him seems suddenly hazy and far away.
KATHRYN HAD MET Paul at the University of Virginia,